It's been a few years since KDiZD was released, so it's about time to announce its sequel: The Shores of ZDoom

About
Our goal is a reinterpretation of Doom's second episode, taking the original maps as a concept base for a new adventure of our own creation.
As with KDiZD, we're not only going to recreate the maps with a more modern appearance, but also add new areas to them to spice up the maps everyone knows so well already.
However, although we are adding more complexity to the maps, we hope to have learned from the mistakes made with KDiZD and we are taking special care to incorporate the layout changes as naturally as possible into the original works and make the resulting levels flow as smoothly as possible.

The team has been working on the project for quite some time now and although progress is rather slow, we're heading somewhere at least. We're also looking for additional mappers, but more on that later...

Screenshots

What is planned/being worked on
- 10 maps + Intermap (UDMF format, SP and Coop friendly)
- new enemies (a few completely new and a few already seen in KDiZD)
- lots of other new content (decorations, textures, sounds etc.)
- new weapon (maybe)

We need help
Considering the large scale of the project and seeing the progress done so far, we decided to look for additional mappers to help us out.
However, we have set ourselves a very high standard when it comes to the visual appearance of the maps and we need to make sure new mappers can keep up with that!
It's not just about the visual design though, we're also trying to keep up with the maps' layouts and added or modified areas need to feel like natural extensions to the originals.
Because of that, we need to ask everyone interested in joining to produce a small-scale demo area to demonstrate your mapping style. It doesn't have to be anything ground breaking, but it should show your understanding of space, architecture and texturing.
It should also be mentioned that we're looking for people willing to stay around for a long time, since we don't want to start looking for new people again a few weeks later!
So if you're interested, just send me a pm and you'll get the textures to create your demo area.

Well, I can't actually recognize a single area from these shots, but that might just be because I hate E2 so much. :P I Normally I might be interested in trying out for a mapping spot, but it looks like I'm going to be busy for the next few months, so it's probably best to hold off on that for now.

The final screenshot is a small section of E2M2, which Brinks has been working on.

As far as the couple of KDiZD-related questions, future KDiZD updates are possible but unlikely - all the critical bugfixing has been taken care of, and we're more interested in progressing forwards and making new stuff than we are in revising the KDiZD maps everyone has already had lots of time to play to their hearts' content by now.

In these maps we've put a lot of care and attention into the alterations being made to the base layouts of the e2 levels they're based upon, and have largely replaced the ad-hoc group-development process of KDiZD's layouts. The end result is feeling very natural and coherent, at least in my opinion from what I've played of what's being worked on; the extensions are being used to bring the maps together more and increase the potential for exploration without forcing the player onto the long, unavoidable and frustrating linear quests that were one of my biggest beefs with KDiZD.

This is for ZDoom, by the way, and is built to be fully compatible with software mode.

In the 7th screenshot I see a Spider demon lookalike... is it an arachnotron or a custom monster derived from the Spider demon? Does TSoZD have the same sprite copyright policy as KDiZD, therefore excluding any Doom 2 art?

Though only some of them look like EP2 to me. The others look like KDIZD, which I felt, though a good mod, didn't look very overly like EP1. I hope the KDIZD style and this new more visually faithful style don't clash.

EDIT: I would nitpick the curved hatch door on the fith shot as looking bad though. I'd switch it position wise with the vents to the right of it.

Are you bringing in-fighting back? After layout design I remember lack of in-fighting to be the biggest critism of KDiZD. The counter-argument of it turning into a mass brawl due to the new monster types were sensible but that could be circumnavigated by grouping certain types of monsters into classes that don't in-fight (imp variants for example), reducing new custom monsters and using strategic thing placement.

40oz said:Im scared it's going to be as slow and boring as KDiZD was. The screenshots show off some pretty small rooms.

E2 itself has a lot of small rooms. Lots of narrow corridors and flat areas, too. Many of the changes and adjustments we've made have actually involved enlarging scenes where appropriate, and incorporating height variation and better interconnectivity. I've enlarged nearly every room I've worked on so far in E2M7, to allow for more freedom in player movement while maintaining the claustrophobic feel of the original map through lighting and visual design.

Episode 2, at least in my mind, involved a lot of exploration and slowed down the pace a bit from episode 1. There is exploration in this, but it absolutely should not be boring or confusing if we're doing our jobs right. "No bullshit backtracking" was one of the first design guidelines we set down when TSoZD was in the planning stages.